Mess of Moments
by foxes
Summary: On Bonnie's 19th birthday, she makes a subconscious wish to alter her life's circumstances so everyone she loved could just be safe. But when she's given the chance to start over, it all comes down in an avalanche of unusual emotions and broken memories, especially when she finds that everyone she loves is Damon Salvatore.
1. I

**Birthday Gallery (I).**

_Have to keep going._

_Her feet were aching, but the fear she felt had settled in every corner of her bones. She was afraid she might just have to tear out of her own skin just to will herself to keep going. She fought the overwhelming urge to look over her shoulder, to track her follower, but she had learned the hard way never to look back for your murders behind you._

_Always steps ahead of you; only look ahead of you._

_Rough, little pants slipped through the witch's drying mouth as her legs quivered and buckled underneath her. A strangled cry left her lips at the impact of her fall onto the concrete ground. Tears welled into her eyes and began pooling out of them a moment later. She'd come this far. She couldn't lose him to the very thing she wanted to keep from him. She couldn't just die for nothing._

_Came so close._

_Have to break the cycle._

_She knows what's happening. She could feel it in her bones. Every inch closer to Wickery Bridge is another inch closer back to the beginning, but that's what she wanted. She just had to get there long enough to say the spell, try at it again. Though with the unwanted company of a humanity-less Damon Salvatore lurking close behind, it would be a long shot._

_Have to try, at least._

_Bonnie pushed herself up onto her aching legs, clutched her Grams' grimoire to her chest and trudged closer to Wickery Bridge. She glanced up to see the moon high and full, shining down on her as if to say it was just for her._

"_Vecto Tempus," Bonnie coughed out._

_She felt him skulking up beside her before she saw him in her peripheral vision. She could smell his scent all around; it was tangled in the air, like he was trying to suffocate her with it. Bonnie waved a hand at him to push him away with magic, though her strength was harshly dwindling by the moment and her magic along with it._

"_Vecto Tempus!" She shouted into the air. "Vecto Tempus!" She pressed again, mustering all her vocal strength into her chants between her sobs._

_She could feel the magic thrumming all around her, leaving her pores and inhabiting the air. Damon urged himself forward and grabbed her by the wrists before she could wave him off again. Bonnie stared up at Damon, veins pulsing underneath his bleeding eyes, and took in all the hurt there, all the pain that he was locking away._

_She deserved it, this was all her fault anyway. She hadn't meant to. It just got out of hand. It all became a mess of things quicker than she found the solution. She got too caught up in him, too caught up in knowing what it was liked to be loved, too caught up in perfection._

_And here she was, about to die for it._

_In a moment, all that feeling in his darkened eyes was gone, drained cold from his body. There was a blank stare there replaced and a growl developing inside his throat._

"_Go ahead. It's already done." Bonnie spat at him. "Do it. Kill me. It won't do a thing."_

_There was no hesitation then, Damon forced her head to the side and sank his teeth into her neck. Bonnie went limp in his arms, letting herself be devoured by a monster of a man. Damon held her close, squeezing her petite frame tighter and tighter until Bonnie felt her ribs begin to crack one after the other._

* * *

Bonnie shot awake in bed, wheezing for air, holding herself around her middle as if she was afraid she might fall apart. She could feel it all over, the aches in her sternum and ribs, yet there wasn't a single bruise or any sign of actual injury there. She ran a shaking hand through her tangled her and glanced around the room. Faint traces of light milked through tiny spaces of her thick curtain and she looked at the clock.

7:34 am

Bonnie sighed deeply, her chest rising with her shoulders and let the aches of her nightmares fall off of her easily. She climbed out of bed then and started her day.

"Just another day," She grumbled as she made her way into the bathroom.

She stared at herself in a full-length mirror that hung from the back of her bathroom door, finally taking a moment to herself to notice all the changes she'd unknowingly undergone since her last birthday. She had stared at herself in her bra and underwear from every angle.

She noticed that she'd lost a noteworthy amount of weight; that her hip bones jutted out of her body so sharply that they looked as though they might just rip right through her caramel skin. She noticed her collarbones were also protruding in an attempt to free themselves of her body. Her arms were thinner now. There was no meat around her bones and her cheekbones seemed more defined now as if her face was sinking into itself.

Like everything in her wanted out.

Her stomach was flat, but that wasn't what had worried her. It was the fact that her she inhaled and you could almost see right through her and to her ribcage directly. She faintly placed fingers under her forest green eyes, tracing the dark circles that had permanently formed under them. And her eyes seemed to lack their color. _She_ seemed to lack a handful of life in her these days.

_I'm desaturating at an alarming rate, _she thought.

She was too thin. She was drained. She wasn't eating much. She was stressed. She was restless. And in this moment, September 4, 2011 at 7:40am, Bonnie realized just how unhappy she truly was with her life. She finally noticed herself withering, but she never meant to. She was wasting away slowly and she never even noticed. It was disappointing that this was how she was bringing in her 19th year of living, coming to terms with the fact that she was slowly dying to keep someone else alive.

And above all that, she was aging. She was getting older and 90% of everyone she knew would never change in their appearance. They would never have to worry about looking as though the life was slowly being drained out of them. They would never have to face up to the fragility of human existence; they got a way around pesky death.

"Happy Birthday to me," She mumbled sarcastically. "I'm dying."

With a sigh, she pulled the over-sized, black t-shirt over her head. It reached to her mid-thighs and it had belonged to an ex-fling of hers. Bonnie couldn't make out what had become of her life, how it had become such a travesty. It seemed that every step she took was another step closer to her death. The life she lived was dangerous and she was constantly on alert, which is why she never slept. She didn't feel safe to sleep, not in this town. Danger lurked on every inch of its perimeter. Nowhere was safe, not even her own home.

Apparently, not even the corners of her own mind.

There was a soft knock on the door that snapped Bonnie out of her trance. She scrambled around, trying to remember what she'd come for in the first place.

"Bonnie, are you almost done?" Caroline asked concerned from the other side of the door.

Bonnie jumped at the sound of her voice. She had forgotten that she'd had Elena and Caroline over last night to bring in her birthday with her.

"Yeah," Bonnie breathed as she opened the door. "Just getting ready for school."

"On your birthday? No. You're not going to bring in your birthday at that hell-hole, Bonnie. Today is all about you and do you honestly think that, with everything going on, I'm not going to find a reason to milk today as a drama-free day full of fun and sisterly bonding?"

At the semi-disgusted, incredulous tone in her voice, Bonnie smiled warmly. At least some things would never really change. That was why she valued Caroline so much lately, because even though their worlds were falling apart – Klaus compelling Stefan to turn off his humanity, turning Tyler into a hybrid, leaving them to deal with the bitch Original Blood-Sucker Barbie version of him, and using Elena as his personal blood bank to form an army of hybrids – She still managed to keep a routine with herself, still managed to hold on to who she was.

She still found a way to hope and believe that everything was fine.

"Listen, B, I know things have been a little bit weird lately..."

"A little bit?" Bonnie returned skeptically, lifting an eyebrow at her. "Try a lot of bit,"

"Fine, I know everything's_ super_ fucked up right now, but it's your birthday and that's something you should take pride in, something you should celebrate. You can't let the stress of it all keep you from living your life."

"That's so easy for you to say what with your never-aging and endless, vampire lifespan. It feels like I haven't slept in days. I'm falling apart or withering away. I can't tell the difference anymore." She whined.

"Just give me today to restore some of your will to exist. I promise today will be fun." Caroline bargained. Bonnie rolled her eyes, fully stepping out of the bathroom.

"Fine, what is it we're doing if we aren't going to school?"

Just as she finished her question, Elena came carefully stalking down the hall, a tiny smile on her face. In her hand, she cradled a small, chocolate cupcake with a single candle lit in its center. Bonnie's features softened then. Her entire body relaxed for a moment, took a break from its constant stiffness and paranoia. Her green eyes welled up, but she kept her bottom lip between her teeth to fight off the oncoming tears.

"Happy Birthday to you," Elena and Caroline sang in unison. "Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday, dear Bonnie. Happy Birthday to you."

"And many more," Caroline sang solo.

Bonnie felt a bit overwhelmed, but it was nice. It made her heart warm and she felt calm and restrained for the first time since her powers had started to come in, since her Grams died, since she took on being Mystic Falls' personal witch and magic blunder eraser. It was nice and she clung to the feeling. It didn't feel exactly weightless, but the world had definitely considerably eased off of her shoulders for a moment.

"You guys, you're amazing." She said softly, looking up at her two best friends with a smile.

"We know," Elena sang with a shrug. "Now quick, make a wish!"

"Well, if it goes out, she can just start it back up with that witchy juju lighter trick of hers." Caroline smirked.

Bonnie rolled her eyes playfully, a smile still tugging at her lips. She didn't think that they'd forgotten, no. She just thought that with all that was going on, none of them would really have time or the energy to celebrate her birthday. It didn't seem appropriate to celebrate her life when almost everyone she knew was dead or on the next list of victims to die, but here they were, planning to go out their way to make her day feel special despite everything else.

Bonnie stared at the candle, trying to muster up into words what she wished for. Her mind was in a blur, but she was rushing through all the events that led her up to right now where she stood. Though she was very thankful that she was even alive, a part of her just couldn't take anymore of everyone's lives being in constant danger. She couldn't take anymore lies or secrecy. She couldn't take anyone else dying.

She thought about Matt, Tyler, Caroline and Elena. She thought about how they'd all grown up together. She thought about how they'd all planned their lives out with each other. She thought about how all of them, excluding Matt, were now some sort of supernatural being. She thought about how ever since the Salvatores came into town, all they knew was fighting for their lives and clawing at the Earth just to have a future. It shouldn't be like this. They should be safe.

_She just wished that things were different and that everyone she loved was safe, that __she __was safe, that the circumstances were different and nobody had to die for Elena's sake._

And just as the thought crossed her mind, she swiftly blew out the candle of the cupcake.

"I sincerely hope you wished for a killer pair of shoes and a to-die-for outfit to magically show up on your doorstep for the party we're planning for you that's tonight at the boardinghouse." Caroline said nonchalantly.

And just like that, the smile was wiped clean off of Bonnie's face. Her eyebrows furrowed together in confusion and she scowled at the baby vampire.

_Party_.

At the _boarding house_.

As in the _Salvatore_ boardinghouse.

As in the _Salvatore brothers_.

As in one deranged vampire that, under compulsion, had ditched his humanity and another one that was just a world class asshole on his own, humanity intact or not.

"What party? And you better not mean the Salvatore boarding house." Bonnie said sternly, folding her arms over her chest to emphasize authority.

Elena bit her lip nervously, choosing that moment to plead plausible deniability, though she was just as guilty as Caroline. Caroline mimicked Bonnie's stance, unmoving in her decision to throw her a party.

"Your birthday party and yes, the only boardinghouse we know of in this town."

"Care, are you insane? In case you have forgotten, Stefan is a human-ripping machine right now. He will kill everyone on-site, except Elena. No humanity. Did that accidentally slip your mind when you decided this?"

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Elena flinch at the mention of Stefan and shift uncomfortably. She was still trying to cope with the fact that he was gone, that he wasn't her Stefan anymore.

"No, I didn't. I remember perfectly, thank you. Stefan's agreed to behave himself at the party."

"And just how did you manage that?" Bonnie questioned, again, skeptically.

"His only job is to keep Elena safe and Klaus wouldn't be too thrilled if he came back to see that Elena was a vampire all because Stefan couldn't control himself just a little."

Bonnie was speechless. Were they serious right now? After a whole year of trying to keep Elena from that, a whole fucking year of trying to keep her alive and human, they were using that as leverage as if it were an option so that they could throw a party? This had to be a joke and Bonnie wasn't laughing.

"No, Damon's still an asshole and I don't want a party. The cupcake and song were enough for me, guys. Tonight, I will be spending the entire night practicing spells and eating take-out Chinese food while I watch Love and Basketball until my eyes bleed."

With that, she brushed past the both of them, heading to her room. Her patience had worn out and all she wanted to do was crawl into bed and sleep off the sudden ache rising in her chest again.

"Oh, come _on_, Bonnie!" Caroline whined. "You are _not _blowing off your own birthday party. I won't let you. I don't care if Stefan's practically insane or that Damon's Damon. You're going and you'll have fun. You're going to drink until the entire world is spinning and dance until your legs are numb. I haven't seen you loosen up in forever, Bonnie and I just want you to have one night of no worries."

Bonnie sighed, immediately feeling just a bit guilty. She was defeated and tired of talking about it already. She knew that Caroline would nag her until she got _something _out of her, though.

"Look," Bonnie sighed. "We'll see how today goes and I'll think about it, okay?"

"Absolutely," Caroline quickly agreed, nodding.

Bonnie rolled her eyes, turning her back to them, and dragged herself back into her bed, face-forward. When did everyday get so difficult to deal with?

"Might want to get up soon though so we aren't off-schedule for the day, Bon." Bonnie groaned in response.

"It's my birthday. I can sleep in if I want to." She groused, earning a look of pure dullness from Caroline to which Elena giggled. "Okay, okay, I'm getting up."

At least there were still some things that didn't seem to ever change.

* * *

(**A/N**) Hello, this is way long overdue, I know. I practically abandoned the story for a while because I just had no idea what to do with it. I lost all ability, it seemed like, to write or even think for the story but I was finally hit with an idea and instead of continuing it as it was, I decided to just rewrite it entirely. The plot is going in an entirely different direction than before, though through the first few chapters I expect that there will be a few familiar scenes that were in the first try at this story. I do have intentions of deleting the other story at some point, but it'll happen when it happens, I suppose. This first one is pretty short, as it's sort of just a start-off. The rest of the chapters will be much longer. Hope you enjoy it and let me know what you think. Thanks, guys - _foxes_

(**Disclaimer**) **I don't own it. CW and L. J. Smith do, though.**


	2. II

**Birthday Gallery (II).**

"Explain to me again why we have to drive to the entire other side of the state just to have dinner?" Bonnie asks, staring out of the car window watching Virginia drag behind them in dizzy, little blurs.

Caroline had told her very little from the start of it, only advising her to wear something pleasurable and satisfying to the eye, and that they were going to take an, impromptu trip away from their lives for a little while. Bonnie obliged solely for the latter reason, an easy escape from the stress of Mystic Falls for even just a moment was kindly welcomed.

Caroline shrugs, nonchalant and refusing to give anything away. "We just thought you needed to take a little leave. We'll be back home by tonight for the party, of course."

And of course, the neurotic blonde smiled merrily at the thought while Bonnie grimaced, somewhat sickened by the idea of spending her birthday evening anywhere near either of the Salvatore brothers. They were both two overwhelmingly colossal problems in her mind amongst the many others that she wasn't sure she had the capacity to deal with today.

"Like I said," Bonnie grumbled. "I'll think about that. We'll see how today goes."

Caroline sighed, frustrated with Bonnie's negative attitude toward the gathering she'd planned and rolled her eyes at her.

_You don't understand how reckless this is, _Bonnie bites in her thoughts.

"Since when did you get so boring, Bonnie?" She griped.

Caught off guard, Bonnie's lips parted with a small scoff of incredulity.

And then there was just red.

"Maybe I got boring when one of my best friends started _dating a vampire_ with an idiot brother that constantly finds a reason to drag me into all of this mess after he's the reason my Grams is _dead_, or maybe it was when my other best friend _became_ _a vampire_ and killed my potential love interest."

Silence consumed everything from that moment forward.

Bonnie clamped her lips shut and folded her arms across her chest quietly, settling back against her seat trying not erupt anymore than she had. It certainly felt like lave slithering down her spine. It wasn't like her to be so ill-tempered towards them. She had become so accustomed to bending to fit their every need and demand. No one present was ever expecting her to really bite back, not even her.

She had become habituated to going along with things she perceived to be perilous, ignoring her strong instinct in an effort to aide her friends in "the good fight", which just so happened to be protecting her best friend's life at all costs. Bonnie did it because she loved Elena as if they shared the same blood, but that didn't mean it didn't hold its weight.

"Well," Caroline's voice emerged from the silence gradually. "I'm sorry that you feel like you can't have a good time anymore because of us."

"Care, that's not what I meant and you know it." Bonnie retorted. "I love you guys and despite everything that's happened in the last year or so, I will always have your backs, but let's all just stop trying to pretend that this isn't messing with all of us. I can't sleep. I feel on edge everywhere I go. We're driving four hours out of town just to get away and I feel like, with our current track record, that's more than enough time for things to fall apart.

"I have an awful feeling about this, about all of this, but like always, I'm ignoring my gut feeling just to make you guys happy, but consenting to participating in pretending like we're not one more humanity-less vampire or hybrid army away from fucking unrecoverable doom is not going to make the anxiety of it all go away. I appreciate the gesture, but I just don't know. I'm not boring. I'm cautious and you should be, too."

There was nothing then, no reply or even an attempt at one. Elena looked at her hands, chipping away at her own nail polish while Caroline looked dead ahead at the road, gripping the steering wheel so tight you could faintly hear it crack. It was all awkward silence and calculated movements now, Bonnie bit away at the insides of her cheeks trying not to feel guilty.

_Need to learn how to swallow apologies I don't owe_, she thought.

And the bad gut feeling just began to get worse.

* * *

They arrived in Richland shortly after one and Bonnie had never been happier to put her feet on solid, unmoving ground again and hear the sounds of people talking obnoxiously loud as they strolled on by. Anything seemed better than that god forsaken silence that felt like it was beginning to break through her skin. She tugged her cardigan around herself now, suddenly feeling the need to withdraw.

She faintly remembers her father saying to her as a child, _"If you go long enough unheard, you'll become unseen as well."_

That's all she wanted at this point, to sink into a little shell of herself and be invisible. It was getting uncomfortable to be around her best friends, but it was mostly just getting uncomfortable pretending there weren't thick layers of unresolved tension and issues between the trio of girls.

_There are so many cracks in the foundations of our friendship_, she thinks to herself. _I still love you, but I don't forgive you. I'm trying, but the resentment is thicker than the tough skin you seem to think I have._

"Guys, can we just...forget about earlier? I was in a mood and _really_ cranky, but I'm awake now and I just don't want today to be awkward between us." She says instead.

Caroline and Elena just stare at her blankly. Both seemed to be rocking back forth on their heels and Bonnie just wonders which of them will crack first. Caroline's lips curl in for a moment and then she clears her throat as if she's about to make some grand declaration.

"I'm not trying to pretend that we aren't on the cusp of all-consuming doom. I know that I murdered someone, but your hands aren't clean either, Bonnie. None of our hands are, but we can't change what we've done. All we can do is forgive ourselves and keep going. That's all I'm trying to do today, is get you to keep going. Enjoy yourself shamelessly and without fear. We're best friends. We've been through some crazy shit together. I don't want you to hate me. We see things differently, but don't forget we're on the same side, Bonnie."

Elena throws her arm around Bonnie's shoulders when Caroline's done. She's smiling like everything is fine and her lovely words smoothed over all the rough areas of their friendship.

_Smooth on the surface but eroding underneath._

"We just want you to have fun today, Bon."

_You just want a distraction from your guilt, temporary gratification for your sins._

Bonnie waits a moment and then plasters a smile on her face that she forces to reach her ears. It's easier to let the anger come out in spurts, she supposes. It's okay to file away the burden of feeling guilty for a moment just to have a good time, she guesses.

"Let's get food." She forces out through slightly gritted teeth. "I'm starving."

And she dismisses it just like that, just like always.

They go to a cheap diner in the center of town. Richland looks nearly identical to Mystic Falls just minus the Supernatural World War III about to break loose. It's a tiny, little town full of people that have known each other their whole lives and buildings that have been there for their whole lives as well. This is the diner the girl over in the booth in front of them visits daily, the diner she's so sick of eating at but it's the only place in town that has decent food.

Bonnie chuckles to herself at the thought.

She, Caroline, and Elena had been giggling from the moment they walked through the door, arms chained together like they were unbreakable. Bonnie tried her best not to be bitter, to enjoy her time with her friends and laugh when it was appropriate, but it all felt so forced to her. It seemed to be happening naturally for them. They fall into familiar ways rather easily, she knows, and used to be the same way, but she wasn't like them much at all anymore.

_The world has driven a wedge through us and we just laugh at the distance between us now._

"So I was thinking," Caroline began, her typical, animated approach restored and on high. "After we finish eating, maybe do a little shopping and find Bonnie something amazing to wear to the party tonight."

Bonnie just nodded and smiled in response, but didn't speak, because she knew that nothing civilized would come out of her mouth. Nothing predominantly lovely was coming up in thought, so. She openly rejected the idea of a party with the idiot Salvatore brothers and it was still being pressured onto her like she'd said nothing at all. Maybe she had said nothing from where they were standing. She felt like she wouldn't win, like she couldn't possibly.

_Can take on monsters with minimal experience, but can't handle friendship after years of building it._

"I'll be back, restroom break." Bonnie says almost inaudibly.

She stands then and with a hard smile, turns her back on the two of them and walks away. She isn't even sure what direction the bathrooms would be in, but away seemed like a good hunch to go on at this rate. It feels like forever drags by before she's tucked away in a dark hallway alone. She doesn't realize she's blistering red with anxiety and anger until she clasps her shaking hands together and shallow breaths follow.

"Now see, that's no way to be on your birthday, Bon-Bon." Damon's velvety voice breaks through the silence, through her soothing solitude, and the fright of it makes the sound a little overpowering to the witch.

It happened then; the superb reflex and defense mechanism of an anxiety-ridden witch began to show.

And the aneurysms started.

In moments, Damon was on his knees, cowering in pain at the feet of the witch as she closed the distance between the two of them.

"Bonnie, stop!" Damon rasps between the bursts of pain exploding in his temples.

And she does as she's told, but she's staring the trouble-making vampire down hard. She knows if she blinks, he'll either be gone or he'll retaliate, because that's just how Damon is. He's as stupid, reckless, and impulsive as he appears to be. Damon's breathing hard, riding out the pain as his body forces itself to heal. He knows it'll pass quickly, but the minutes that pass waiting for that are gruesome.

"What the _hell_ was that for?" Damon demands to know.

His forehead is bunched up in a delicate mixture of confusion, shock, fury, and a small margin of fear. He looks at her in anger, but he's mostly intrigued by it.

"What the _hell_ are you doing here?" Bonnie retorts, folding her arms over her chest.

Damon pulls himself back up on his feet, brushing himself off and straightening his jacket back comfortably around his thick frame. Bonnie finds it impossible not to stare when either of the Salvatore brothers is present. They were both alarmingly foolish at times and always seemed to be the source of her troubles, but they were gorgeous, and that was – well, that.

"I came to keep eyes on Elena. I don't know what Klaus is up to. I don't think it's safe for you guys to be out this far without someone to watch after you. You all seem to be pretty naïve on the safety scale."

Bonnie didn't think she'd ever think it, but it was actually slightly intelligent of him.

_Creepy, but smart_.

"You aren't doing a very good job protecting us. I took you down pretty easily just about, two seconds ago." She reminds him, fighting the smirk wanting to tug at her lips.

"Disrespectful considering I came to check on you." He says then and it catches Bonnie off guard.

"I'm fine." She immediately insists and allows her hard exterior to rebuild around her.

She doesn't want Damon pretending to worry about her for a moment just to use her a minute later, again. He's so high on the list of things that Bonnie no longer has the capacity to deal with anymore that she can't even bring herself to entertain the thought that Damon had good intentions for a second longer.

"Listen." She says with a sigh. "I don't really care what you're up to or what you came to do. Just stay out of our way. I don't want to see you or hear you or even be consciously aware of the fact that you're stalking us. It's my birthday and you aren't going to ruin it."

"Ouch," He feigns offense, hand pressed against his heart and lips slightly parted. "By the sounds of it, witch, somebody already has."

He lets the words weigh on Bonnie for a moment, then in a mere beat, he's gone, and it feels easier to breathe again. And despite incessantly being this imposing frustration she can't seem to get away from for even a day, he isn't wrong about what he's said.

* * *

The rest of the afternoon and evening go on smoothly, even though Bonnie was kept on her toes and peeking out of the corner of her eyes every moment or so in search of the elder Salvatore's presence. She wanted to be unaware of his existence altogether, but even if she couldn't see him now, seeing him at the diner gave him this overwhelming feeling of still being there, everywhere, consuming the air around them.

_This is what it feels like to believe in God, I'm sure, but he's one artery away from practically being Satan._

Bonnie even gets a dress that she's borderline in love with, despite having no will to wear it for tonight's event, she had put it on and immediately decided she never wanted to take it off. It was a plum color, 100% silk, knee-length, strapless dress and it hugged her shape in just the right way. It was perfect. It was coming of age. It was a healthy blend of sexy and classy. It was exactly what she wanted, if she had to have anything.

"Bonnie!" Caroline calls for her outside of her bedroom door and Bonnie is snapped out of her trance, back into the present. "Are you almost ready? You can't be late to your own birthday party! Let's go!"

Bonnie's staring at herself in her full-length mirror now, admiring the beauty of her new dress and her new black pumps that Caroline bought for her as a gift, saying that no matter what she wore, they would go with anything. There are a few things in Caroline's line of reasoning that needed adjustment, but fashion sense didn't seem to be one of them, ever.

"Coming!" Bonnie called back.

Bonnie gave herself one more look over, tugging at one of the perfect, ringlet curls Caroline had given her hair and practicing her 'so-happy-to-be-here' smile one more time. She couldn't deny that she both looked and felt beautiful, but she also couldn't deny the tug in her gut that was screaming into her head that this was the worst idea Caroline has ever had. Something was going to go wrong. Bonnie could feel it into the core of her being now.

Bonnie's intuition was never really wrong. She was sort of supernaturally programmed that way.

"You've said that three times now and you still haven't come out!" Elena snapped.

With a roll of her eyes, Bonnie swallowed down the bad feeling and headed for the door.

* * *

(**A|N**) Just want to say a quick thank you to those of you who are following/favoriting the story and reviewing! Also need to reiterate that I started this new version of the story because it has a genuine direction. The last version lived up to this fic's title. The plot was a mess of moments that didn't really make much sense together. I couldn't work with it anymore. I won't be finishing that version. Eventually, I'm going to delete it. I don't know when, but eventually. This is sort of a filler chapter. Just wanted to show where Bonnie really stood with her life. I'm not following the plot of the show, mostly because I can't remember what happened back in season 2-3 anymore and I have no desire to rewatch it haha, but the lack of remembrance left a lot of room for plot creativity. There's one more part to the Birthday Gallery chapters!

(**Disclaimer**) Don't own it. CW and L. J. Smith do, though.


	3. III

**Birthday Gallery (III).**

It wasn't entirely awful, the party.

It seemed to be free of the select vampires on her 'absolutely not' list and full of people from school and her other social circles outside of her #1 supernatural buddies, people she liked, people who were a part of her life when she thought she was just a simple, human being. They were laughing and dancing, greeting Bonnie with long-time-no-sees, happy-birthdays, pleasant smiles, and many drinks.

It almost seemed normal.

At first, Bonnie couldn't be bothered to swallow down this need to be finicky, to pull for flaws. She wasn't in the mood to try and have fun, but Matt was smiling at her so warmly (his big, baby blues seemed to be smiling, too and she couldn't remember the last time she'd seen that in him) and she'd already had a few to drink so her limbs didn't feel so stiff anymore. He was tugging at her hands, trying to use his ever-so-charming influence to get her onto the floor, to let all her worries melt to music.

And it seemed like she caved without much of a fight, but.

It was Matt, one of the few remaining things that reminded her of what it was like to have a happy, normal life, and Bonnie could only force an uninterested look for so long. Before she knew it, Donovan's hands were around her waist and she was giggling in his arms as they danced, unrhythmically, to the music blaring overhead. She got lost, very quickly it seemed, in the music and in Matt.

Smiling, Bonnie laid her head against Matt's chest. "Ugh," She groaned. "I can't even remember the last time I actually felt like dancing."

Bonnie was staring off into the crowd, rested against her friend's torso, thoughts wandering off into the distance. The music had fallen to something more slow-paced and Matt simply swayed the two of them from side-to-side absentmindedly, but didn't respond. He couldn't remember, either.

That's when Bonnie felt it.

The atmosphere around the witch seemed to take on a new density. A long-limbed, slender woman with sun-kissed, olive skin and black, bushels of curls came into Bonnie's immediate view then. She stood there doused in confidence and a thick, white glow of sheer power. Bonnie made contact with her murky, deep green eyes and felt immediately, that she knew her. It was almost maternal warmth that flooded her.

"I'm gonna go get us drinks, okay, Bon?" Matt said, snapping Bonnie out of her trance.

She smiled up at him briefly and nodded, pulling herself from him. When she turned to face the woman she'd seen, she was gone. Bonnie looked in every direction, eyes scanning over the small crowd searching for that thick bush of hair again, but she'd completely disappeared.

Bonnie got chills. She couldn't deal with another Emily scenario.

"Witch," Damon's voice sounds behind her. She jumps a little and turns to find him smirking at her and nursing a glass of something, probably Bourbon, between his lips. "Jumpy, are we?"

Bonnie rolls her eyes then and sighs, already exhausted with dealing with him. "Stop creeping up behind me, ass. What are you even doing here?"

"Last time I checked, witch, this was _my_ house."

Bonnie takes the glass out of his hand and throws back the dark liquid with slight disgust. "And the last time _I_ checked, this was _my_ party and _you_ weren't invited."

"Yikes, somebody woke up on the wrong side of the cauldron this morning."

Bonnie fakes a laugh. "I don't think homicidal vampire is your calling after all, Damon. You should look into stand-up comedy."

Damon mocks a gross level of offense. "Put your claws away, kitty. I only came to say Happy Birthday and to tell you that dress is obviously your color, because poor Matt is only barely keeping the drool in his mouth."

"That's as close to a compliment I feel you can get. Thanks, goodbye now. "

And with that, Bonnie pushes past Damon to make her way back to Matt. As quickly as the fun settled into her bones, it also exhausted her mental state in the same time. She was already fed up of this and all it took was a second encounter with Damon in one day. Her tolerance level was a slippery slope these days. She just wanted to stand outside in the cool air, away from everyone else, underneath the moonlight.

It was a need that was slowly creating this thick sense of heaviness in her chest. Something was pulling her away from this house, away from these people, towards the moonlight. It was overpowering and she had no choice but to give into the demands of it. She abandoned her original destination, leaving Matt calling after her in confusion, but his voice was just a low hum in the back of Bonnie's mind.

Something was calling her out and she was coming.

Bonnie stumbled outside a moment later, unsure of how long it took to make it through all those people. The world around her had become an irrelevant blur. It was like she was on autopilot, her magic forcing her body to push her where it willed. It felt as though she had minimal control, but once she found herself standing in the direct line of the moonlight, she felt better, like she could breathe on her own again.

She stood there, completely still for a moment, the light of the moon causing little chills to shiver up her spine and tingles directly underneath the surface of her skin. Her magic was coming alive in her. She noticed that this tended to happen sometimes since embracing her witch-hood, a substantial source of energy calls out to her to recharge her being and restore her vitality.

After a moment, Bonnie took note of the gnawing sound coming from beside her. She looked over to see Stefan, teeth sunk deep into the bushy-haired woman with the long limbs and angled jaws that Bonnie had seen in the party. A strong sense of protectiveness flooded her and Bonnie marched towards Stefan, hands ready and magic building to take him down.

"Stefan!"

But just before Bonnie could make her move, she saw the woman's lips move quickly and in an instant, Stefan fell stiff to the ground at her feet. And she was smiling down at his lifeless frame. Bonnie took total notice of her then. She was tall, and her bones seemed to nearly pierce out of her skin. She wore nothing but a thin burlap-like cloth around her chest and another around her bottom.

She was barefoot with a bracelet around her left ankle that seemed to be made of sharp teeth. Intricate patterns of ink decorated her hands and up her feet, along her jaw, from between her eyes to down her nose. Two perfect teeth marks appeared on the side of her neck, two thin ribbons of her dark blood trailed down her creamy skin. She had a certain ethereal beauty that Bonnie couldn't fathom.

And she was taking long strides towards Bonnie.

Bonnie's eyes widened for a moment and she turned to run, but her entire sight was blinded by a brilliant light and then engulfed by total darkness. Her body went stiff then and fell to the ground a split second later.

* * *

Bonnie's eyes open to find herself, once again, bathing in the light of the moon. Somewhere around her, she hears a feminine voice mumbling to herself, over and over, in what sounds like nervousness or panic. Bonnie rolls to her side and pushes herself up into sitting position. She stares directly ahead at the woman sitting on the ground a few feet from her. Bonnie should be scared, should feel as though she's in danger.

But all she feels is honor and overwhelming curiosity.

"You must have questions." She says to Bonnie. "I have to use your voice for a moment then, I apologize."

The woman is beautiful and it seems to be catching Bonnie off guard. Her voice is velvety and warm, lulling to the ears. She speaks and Bonnie can't form the words to respond, just nods her head simply. There's a thin layer of calm that settles down over Bonnie when she speaks and she can't help but wonder what kind of magic this woman has to harbor in her to have such a strong influence over Bonnie's present state.

"I am no one. I have no name, no particular vessel, but I am everything that your magic identifies with." She says, looking Bonnie over with her own interest. "Not very many of you have the power it requires to call out to me, but you did. You must have mighty power. You must have little control."

_Something like that._

"I am not very easily awakened, young one, understand." She continues on and Bonnie listens to her but doesn't utter a word. It doesn't feel as though she could if she wanted to. "You must be in very great distress to desire my assistance. Many of our blood experience immense suffering, but none so traumatizing they seek to me for correction."

_How could I possibly call to you if I have no idea who you are to me?_

The woman looks up to Bonnie with a smile. "I am you, but I am myself as well. You have no memory of me, but you know me. We share the same blood that courses in your veins. You should know that time is in a constant cycle of repeating itself. We have met before, I assure you. There is a connection to me deep in your core, but it takes great magic and will to lure me out."

_What do you want from me?_

Bonnie opened her mouth to speak, but no sound came out. She could hear her own voice loud in her head as if she had spoken the words, but they hadn't left her lips.

"I came to aid you, of course."

Bonnie watched as her green eyes rolled into the back of her head and her sockets were filled with a ghostly white. Words left her lips in a low, inaudible chant. The ground beneath them began to shake violently. Bonnie sank her fingers into the dirt to keep herself down.

Bonnie kept her head down in her arms, waiting for the end to come. When it did, she was left sitting alone on the side of a road next to a dark forest with all-consuming silence to comfort her.

She looked around urgently, looking for the woman with no name. She stood to her feet and looked down at herself. Her birthday dress was gone and so was any rational explanation for what had just happened. She stood barefoot, clad in a black, over-sized t-shirt, on the side of the road in the middle of the night. She cursed under her breath and began to walk down next to the road.

She hugged herself closely to fight off the cold air of the night, but it nipped and bit at her exposed body. She looked around, taking in her surroundings. She was standing at one end of Wickery Bridge. Confused, she quickly looked around to make sure nothing was lurking, because her gut was telling her that something was terribly off. Something was wrong.

Just as the thought came, she noticed the headlights nearing in the distance. As they came closer, her eyes became too sensitive of the light too stand it and so she shielded them, not before she caught a glimpse of Elena's father, Grayson Gilbert, with a look of fear on his face.

It all happened in a blur then, very quickly. She heard the screeching of the car's tires as he had attempted to break and stop the vehicle, but it spiraled. Bonnie's eyes widened and her breath was caught in her throat as she watched the car topple off of the bridge and side-ways into the water below.

She just witnessed the death of her best friend's parents.

A whimper was all the sound that Bonnie could make, because she knew this was wrong. Stefan was supposed to save Elena. Stefan was supposed to come and he was supposed to get her out before she died along with her parents. Her mind in chaos and a cluster of nonsensical, backwards thoughts, Bonnie frantically looked around, screaming Stefan's name.

She then ran, but her knees were weak. Her whole body was shutting down. She ran with tears streaming down her face, screaming for him as if her own life depended on it.

"Stefan, where are you!?"

But he wasn't there. He wouldn't respond, because he wasn't there and this was a dream. All of this had to be a dream. The world around began to shake again and Bonnie's knees gave way and buckled under her. She fell to the ground, crumbled in on her own body, and tried to clutch to the Earth under her.

She felt herself slowly drifting back and before she could register the span of events, she was sat pin-straight up in bed, coughing and crying like she hadn't been able to breathe and her body was still rejecting air. She felt a warm pair of strong arms snake themselves securely around her waist – her _nude_waist – while she sobbed and choked for breath.

"It was just a dream, Bon. It was just a dream. Breathe." Damon said soothingly in her ear – _Damon_.

Bonnie froze, her breathing still deep and trying to regain composure, but her entire body was suddenly stiff as Damon held her as close to him as he possibly could, kissing her temple, telling her over and over that it was just a bad dream, that he was there, that she was _safe_.

**With him**.

_Damon_.

"Are you okay?" He asked her, noticing that she was still and her breathing was slowly becoming calmer.

Bonnie turned her head slightly to catch a glimpse of him and the concerned look on his face. She was naked.

In bed.

With Damon fucking Salvatore.

She focused all of her power then and Damon's head filled with a swift rush of pain, causing him to fall back into bed, arching his back as it grew. Bonnie then jumped out of bed, taking his silk sheets with her, and wrapping them around her body.

"What the hell, Bonnie!" Damon yelled at her. "What was that for?"

"What the hell was it for?" She asked him incredulously. "How did I get here?" A beat of silence passed. Her mind was going a mile a minute. "Did _Caroline_put you up to this as some kind of sick birthday joke?" She asked angrily. Damon's face twisted up with both anger and confusion.

"What are you talking about, Bonnie?" Damon shouted. "You practically live here!"

Bonnie's blood was boiling. And Damon could see it in her face, the way she was flushed with red and her entire body was shaking. Her anxiety had reached an all time high. She held a sheet around her naked body with one hand and used the other to send Damon flying across the room into his dresser and then to the floor.

She could feel it in her whole body. She was about to erupt, right here in Damon's bedroom, and it wasn't going to end well for anyone.

"Tell me what's going on!" She snapped at Damon, even though he was rocking on the floor in pain that she'd inflicted on him.

That's when Stefan intervened, unable to endure the noise anymore. He walked in, no shirt, only pajama pants, and trailing behind him was a very confused, messy-haired Caroline who clung to his forearm in fear that she would be Bonnie's next target. She was dressed only in a button-up shirt that looked to belong to Stefan.

The sudden distraction in her thought pattern made Bonnie ease up on Damon, because she was now trying to figure out why Caroline was here.

"What the hell is going on in here?" Stefan asked angrily.

"_She_," Damon began as he picked himself up to his feet. "- woke up from a bad dream and went bat shit insane on me!" Damon exclaimed. "She used her little brain explosions on me. _Me_!"

The tone in his voice was shocked, confused and slightly pained.

"Who put me in his bed?" Bonnie just about growled.

"Uh, you did?" Caroline answered carefully. Damon was right. Bonnie was going bat shit crazy and none of them could understand why, but she wasn't in the mood to be tossed across the room this early in the morning. "You've been putting yourself there for a while."

"Caroline," Bonnie warned.

Caroline squeaked and Stefan placed himself protectively in front of her. That didn't go unnoticed by Bonnie, the way Stefan was letting her cling to him, the way Stefan looked almost murderous at the threatening tone in Bonnie's voice toward Caroline.

"You know what? Screw all of you." She muttered.

She grabbed a random pile of clothing off of Damon's floor and made her way into his bathroom, slamming the door behind her as hard as she could. It was enough to make the doorframe shake and the sounded echoed around the room for a moment. Three stunned faces stared at the door in utter horror. Stefan looked at Damon, his head cocked to the side in question.

"Fuck if I know." He answered, tossing his arms in the air exasperatedly, before Stefan even had the chance to ask.

* * *

(**A|N**) Hello again. Sorry for the wait. It takes me a while to get things done with my job schedule. You may recognize the end if you've read the previous version of this! It's probably the last time I'll use the old fic as reference. Anyhow, thank you for all the faves and follows and reviews! You lot are lush. I'll hopefully be able to get the next chapter out soon, fingers crossed.

(**Disclaimer**) Don't own it. CW and L. J. Smith do, though.


	4. IV

**Equilibrium**

Anger filled the entire length of Bonnie's frame. Her breath was heavy as she stretched the random articles of clothing over her body like a madwoman. She didn't know what was going on, but she knew that she wasn't going to stand for it. Whatever trick they thought they were playing her for, she wasn't having it and there would be consequences.

If this was a joke, how on Earth could anyone expect her to find it funny? And to put her in bed, naked, with the one person she truly couldn't stand? Well, Caroline had reached a new low.

She couldn't have possibly drank that much last night, could she?

"Fucking rotten Salvatores," She muttered under her breath angrily as she looked in the mirror at herself and let her hair down out of the ponytail it had somehow gotten in.

Bonnie froze, nearly gasped. She didn't even recognize her own reflection. Her once dark brown hair was now a jet black to a pure white ombre and where it had once come just over her shoulders, now ended at her chest. Her skin seemed to glow with a certain level of power she never remembered seeing in herself.

Her green eyes seemed to shine brighter than she'd ever known as well. Her face wasn't just free of makeup but free of a single blemish; no more acne scars she'd been hiding underneath her makeup for years, just smooth, creamy, even skin. She put her fingertips to her face in both awe and confusion. Bonnie had never recalled having such an angled jaw structure.

She had no recollection of looking this naturally _beautiful_, or feeling it when she saw her own reflection.

Bonnie looked around the spacious and lavishly decorated bathroom. The entire area was drenched ceiling-to-floor in an eggplant purple, taupe, and charcoal color-scheme. Everything appeared to be in a 'his-and-hers' setting. One taupe towel with an eggplant 'D' embroidered into the fabric's corner rested on a towel rack right next to a matching eggplant towel with a taupe 'B' in its corner as well.

_Where in the hell am I? _Bonnie thought to herself.

Just as the thought formed, she had to grip the counters for stability. She was overcome by a sudden rush to the head of dizziness. Her ears began to ring and it seemed like all she could hear or make sense of was this faint sound of low chanting in the back of her mind. She brought her hand up to her ear to cover it, a natural instinct, and promptly hit the floor unconscious.

But to Bonnie, she had merely closed her eyes for a moment to focus in on the alluring sound of the steady chanting as it grew louder and louder in her head.

When she opened her eyes, she found herself standing beside the pool at Mystic Falls High School. And directly on the other side of the pool, stood the unnamed woman that she'd seen last night. Bonnie's brows furrowed together in perplexity as the recollections of the previous evening came rushing back to her.

The last thing she remembers then is the woman saying that she was there to help her.

"Who are you?" Bonnie asks out loud, her voice echoing around the otherwise vacant area. "What did you do to me?" She demands.

The woman simply glances at her and begins to walk around the edge of the pool, watching Bonnie the entire time until she closed the distance between the two of them. Her piercing green eyes scan over Bonnie's face and her hair. She grins at her and places her hand over Bonnie's mouth.

"I must make use of your voice, if you mean me to elaborate." She says, voice velvety smooth and just as enthralling as the last time she'd heard it. "I have no voice of my own. I have no vessel, merely an inhabitant of many. If we must speak, we must speak in a way that I can perceive your sound suitably and you the same."

_What did you do to me?_

She smiles warmly at Bonnie. "I saved you from your own self. You were damned to an inevitable, but unbalanced demise."

_Who are you?_

"I am no one. I have no name." She says. "I exist in this space, in every corner of your mind, and also in your magic. I am where you draw your magical energy from. I once was someone of our blood. I once was the only one of our blood. I have had no physical form in what feels like light-years worth of time."

Her eyes look far away. Though she is staring at Bonnie, it's as if she is reminiscing of the last time she was a person, of what it used to feel like to feel and comparing it to what it feels like now. Bonnie's curiosity springs.

_What happened to you?_

That seems to regain her attention. "Nothing happened to me. I eagerly gave my blood to the veins of strong women and a man I had loved when I could love. I shed my physical form and pressed my soul underneath their skin, then beneath their daughters' skin and their sons'. I spoke my knowledge into their minds, gave them and their offspring a tongue of their own to master, and laid my body into dirt to give balance to the natural world."

Bonnie blinks in amazement. Was she standing before the first witch to ever exist? She seems to sense this and smiles at the young witch with amusement. If Bonnie could speak, she would have millions of questions, but all she can seem to do is nod and bow her head in respect to the woman.

_Like she's witch royalty or something._

"I could not sustain the sense of balance on my own. I was of great power, but not of the kind I needed. It seemed wiser, and also inevitable, to spread my energy and ability into multiple, select others I could trust to practice it with vigilance and insight. By giving myself to the Earth, it gave me access to the great kind of power source needed to keep a methodical balance.

And to have others of my blood in the physical realm aiding to keep it as well, it changed the course of events for this world entirely. Your kind would not have survived very long without them. I did not expect the first of our blood to have the power it takes to awaken me to be a young, inexperienced girl."

_Clumsy and somewhat corrupt, maybe, but not inexperienced. I didn't call you._ Bonnie insists. _I can barely fathom your existence let alone summon it to advise my own._

She waves a hand dismissively. "You are simply not conscious of your strength and could never be aware of them in your frail reality with your standing, pitiable circumstances; but here, you radiate with strength and power that others of our blood can _barely fathom_, little Bonnie Bennett. I'm doing you an act of kindness, on varying ends of the spectrum."

Bonnie stares at her, unable to speak and hardly able to move. How could she possibly understand what this woman means when she's practically talking in circles to her? All Bonnie has gathered about the woman is that she used to be a person, but gave it up to head the spirits, she cannot speak unless she projects her own voice with yours, she is the reason all witches exist, and has a pretty pointed temper.

Also, that she herself had clearly been ripped from her home, the place where she'd always existed.

_You consider throwing me in bed with Damon Salvatore to be an act of kindness? Where in the hell am I, anyway?_

She smiles again at Bonnie. "In time, you will gain understanding, but just remember what I told you before. Time is in a consistent cycle of repeating itself in order to maintain a balance in events that lead up to present existence. There is always an equilibrium that is meant to be upheld, circumstances that must transpire in order to keep both the physical world and the spiritual world coexisting in harmony and there are always a number of realities to support that harmony.

For every decision that you have ever made and everything that has ever happened to you, there is an additional reality that exists beside it where you have decided the exact opposite or where a certain event does not exist at all and that, in turn, sends each reality onto an entirely separate course of events, each version of yourself going in a different directions and achieving different outcomes. Where are you? You are where you have always been. That is the wrong question to ask.

I simply drew you from the toxic, needless reality that you existed in, the one that would soon be incapable of preserving a balance with the spiritual world, and placed you here, where your surroundings are able to correspond with the laws of nature, in some sense. And the things that are not able to, you have the ability to correct.

You and her called to me at the exact same moment, unknowingly to you both. I suppose that is how your power was enough to drag me out of the soil. She needed to go back to correct her wrongs and you desired an extreme shift in circumstances, but she is gone now. I could not send her lifeless body back, but I also could not allow such a dramatic shift in the balance with her death. I traded her life for your death.

She can exist here as long as you do, with your body and your mind, but you cannot be there and here all at once."

_What did you do to my home? My life, all my friends and family? _

The look on Bonnie's face was suddenly fearsome and panicked, maybe hysterical if what she assumed had happened actually happened. Her heart began to race inside her chest.

The woman looked her dead in the eyes, gripped her shoulders tightly and said, "It is gone. It did not assist the sense of balance to survive. You have lost nothing. You have gained many things. Your home is here, your friends, your family, and your life. This is merely a separate direction that you chose to go in life. You have a chance to make a new home for yourself, one that supports you and your life, one that brings little trouble and much pleasure."

Tears pooled into Bonnie's eyes. What did this mean? Was everything she had ever known gone or not? Why was this happening to her? She knew that her life was becoming a giant, tangled web of pure chaos, but she didn't mean for all of this.

_What's going to happen to me now? If where I came from no longer exists, do I no longer exist?_

"Not as long as you are here. You will thrive with life in the vessel of a separate side of yourself and perceive as she did. It will be up to you to accept the knowledge her mind has to offer yours. It will always be there, itching to be released, mind you."

Bonnie blinked with her mouth wide open and head dropped down. She felt defeated, as if she had no other option but to say okay. What was done was done. Her life was gone, just like that. It was stripped from existence entirely and even her body was gone now. She was sharing someone else's, or some twisted version of her own. She still didn't really quite understand how this all worked, but she got the gist of it.

She'd been lifted from her own body and placed into a different body of her own (apparently, there were a variety of Bonnies out there to select from). Immediately after, the reality she had always existed in and known was promptly broken and torn from existence as a whole.

With her head down, she asked, _What will I do now?_

The woman tilted Bonnie's head upward and shared a smile with her. "This is not damnation, child. This is your saving grace. You will wake up and do as you have always done, keep going. See it from all sides and correct the path."

* * *

Damon is waiting.

He finds himself standing on the immediate other side of the bathroom door, back against the wall and arms folded over his chest, waiting for her to come out and explain what the hell that was all about. He's pissed, of course, about the way she reacted when she woke up, but mostly just pissed that she hurt him. She never hurts him; not on purpose, anyway.

It was an unspoken rule of respect between them, he thought, that they would never use their supernatural advantages to hurt one another. His shoulder had dislocated when he hit the armoire and a bit of his spine shifted. She was trying to hurt him and he couldn't make any sense of that. She had never tried to hurt him since they had been together. In fact, he thought she was trying her damnedest not to hurt him at all.

He hears her mutter, "Fucking rotten Salvatores" and this overwhelming sadness swells in his chest. The only people's opinions of him that truly mattered to Damon was his brothers and hers. She knew that, so why was she being this way towards him, especially when he'd done nothing to deserve it. She was pushing him away from her and Damon feared this the most as of late, he thought she'd been relatively happy with him last night, though.

He threw her a surprise party the previous night. He invited all of her pathetic, human friends, even the ones he utterly despised like Matt Donovan and Tyler Lockwood. He was nice and polite to them, kept his fists and fangs to himself like he swore he would. He invited the nobodies of the math club that she had somehow managed to befriend, because Bonnie was great at befriending everyone she came in contact with. He invited the idiot jocks on the football team she cheered for. He even invited all those empty-headed cheer-drones she leaded.

He didn't try to feed on them, either.

Damon was the under the impression, by her unwavering smile all night and the incredible sex that followed the party, that he had done everything right. He couldn't understand why she would wake up after that kind of night, in that violent of a mood.

He stood there, both lost in thought and intensely aware of Bonnie on the other side of the door at once, breathing steady and even, but she was silent now. He listened closer and noticed that her heart started to race and her breath caught abruptly, as if she were gasping for air. The next thing Damon hears is Bonnie's body hit the floor before he kicks the door in without warning or hesitation.

"Bonnie!" He yelled and kneeled down by her lifeless body. "Bonnie, wake up." He pleaded.

The only relief he clung to was the fact that she was breathing evenly again. He looked over her exposed body for scars or marks that would indicate why she'd fallen unconscious, but there was nothing. He gathered Bonnie into his arms as if he were gathering flowers in Spring and carried her body back into their room, back into their bed. He had no intentions of leaving her side or letting her out of his sight now.

"Stefan!" He calls for his brother again, knowing that he'd be listening, knowing that he'd come quickly. "Stefan, get up here!"

Stefan appears at his door a moment later, concern imprinted into his facial features already. Damon says nothing; just lets Stefan survey the scene before him. Bonnie in clothes that mostly don't belong to her, unconscious and laying under the protective hold of his brother who is watching the witch fixedly, apprehension written all over his pale skin.

"What happened?" Stefan asks.

"I don't know. I don't know!" Damon says in a panic. "I heard her hit the floor and she's breathing, but she won't wake up. Just call Sheila. Tell her to come and look at her. Maybe it's something with her magic. I have to be here if she wakes up."

Stefan nodded in understanding and Damon sighs, because it's always something with her magic. Every day that went by, Bonnie seemed to get stronger and more accidentally destructive. There were times that seemed more drastic than this, where Bonnie's irritation would turn into rage and every window of the house would shatter, where Bonnie's sadness would manifest into dark clouds hovering over their heads, flooding towns with rain and tornadoes that swept pieces of cities away.

And he didn't care about any of that, not really. He had been there through all that terror and after. He'd even be here now, after the wake up call she'd given him this morning. He just hoped that she was okay.

* * *

(**A|N**) Thanks for all the reviews, follows, and faves! I really appreciate it. I love to hear what you guys are thinking is going to happen or things that you want to happen. Let me know what you think about this chapter!

(**Disclaimer**) Don't own it. CW and L. J. Smith do, though.


	5. V

**The Departed**

When Bonnie opened her eyes, the first thing she could make out as her vision cleared was two cold, glistening blue eyes staring down at her with concern and something deeper that she couldn't name. She couldn't make out his shape yet, but she immediately knew that Damon was still there.

There was something about the elder Salvatore's eyes; they were impossible to disregard once she'd ever shared a glance with them. And something about him being near her at that moment made her heart immediately leap into her chest.

Bonnie's eyes wandered over to spot a pair of warm, brown eyes that she had believed she'd never have the pleasure of seeing again. Once she fully registered the face of Sheila Bennett, her once deceased grandmother, looking down at her with mild amusement, her own eyes widened with shock and Bonnie shot up abruptly.

"Grams?" She gasped, cupping her grandmother's face into her hands. "Is it really you?" She asked, hopeful tears beginning to gather in her eyes.

Sheila stared the younger witch down with curiosity. "Who else would it be, child?"

_You have lost nothing. You have gained many things._

Bonnie just sobbed and laughed, all at once.

The sound of the woman's voice reverberated around Bonnie's head, allowing her a bright smile and euphoric laughter. Damon and Stefan, who stood in similar positions (folded arms and straight-shouldered) on opposite sides of the bed, shared an equally disturbed look with one another and then back at Bonnie.

"What is _wrong_ with her?" Caroline asked in a hushed, inquiring voice. "Why is she acting like she hasn't seen her Grams in forever? Why is she _crying_?"

"Bonnie, honey, settle yourself." Sheila says simply and pulls away from Bonnie's embrace. "What has gotten into you? I just saw you yesterday. I love that you missed me, but truthfully, this is a little theatrical."

Bonnie wiped the elated tears from her eyes and looked around at the present company that just witnessed her reunion with her Grams. Something shook Bonnie's spine at the thought that these were people that she knew just hours ago and now they were all practically strangers.

_Then not much has really changed; if you really think about it, has it?_

Stefan stood to the right side of the bed she sat in, confusion written plainly on his face. Caroline stood behind him, messy-haired and brows furrowed up as they do when she's trying to solve a complicated equation in her head.

And on her direct left, right behind her Grams, stood Damon Salvatore, his arms folded over his chest, muscles clinging to the fabric of his shirt, looking like a God amongst common men. Bonnie wondered, absently, if her mouth might be watering. She had never remembered Damon looking this attractive. His hair was a few shades lighter now and his shoulders seemed to be wider.

Now, unlike the first time she'd woken up to his presence, something in Bonnie's body sang for him, and urged her to be closer to him. It disgusted her, mentally, but she couldn't make it go away. She had to look away from him, but even looking away didn't make her less aware of him standing there with his eyes directly on her.

There was something about the way he was looking at her that begged for her attention, demanded to be acknowledged by her.

"I have no idea where I am." Bonnie spilled. "This woman sent me here, but I don't know where here is. It's all very complicated." She sighs, cradling her head in her hands, trying to keep her heart beat at a steady pace. "Was my birthday yesterday?"

She was answered with collective silence and a group of hard, uncertain stares. The tension seemed to lather between Bonnie and them very quickly. Caroline bit her lip, took a breath and opened her mouth to speak but all that came was a small squeak and a frustrated huff.

"You don't where here is?" Damon repeats her blankly, but phrases it as a question.

Bonnie shakes her head. "I'm assuming I'm still in Mystic Falls, but I don't know anything about this place, anything about any of you besides your names, unless that's changed, too. Alternate reality and all that."

"_Alternate reality_?" Stefan questions incredulously, the tone of his voice heightening with his skepticism.

Bonnie nods her head slowly. "Look, Stefan, I know it sounds crazy, but-"

"_Sounds_ crazy?" Stefan interrupts. "Bonnie, it is crazy."

"I'm confused, too! I didn't ask to be dumped here, okay? Last night, I was at my birthday party that _Caroline_ threw for me. I woke up this morning next to the person I despise the most." She glared in Damon's direction to find that he's already sulking at her like a wounded puppy.

She continues anyway. "This woman," She sighs, suddenly becoming frustrated. "I don't know who or what she is. I don't even know if she really exists or not. She put me here. She said I'm supposed to correct the path. I don't know what to do, but I can't go home." Bonnie laughs contemptuously. "Because it doesn't exist anymore, so yeah. I'm kind of stuck here until further notice."

"So," Caroline begins. "You're not Bonnie?" She asks, confused.

"I am Bonnie. I guess I'm just not _your_ Bonnie."

Sheila is looking at Bonnie as if she doesn't know her, as if she's suddenly grown a second head on the side of her neck. Bonnie gulps hard. She hadn't thought of this when she just blurted out that she had no idea who they were or where she was. They may not accept her. They might just abandon her, or worse, kill her.

"Grams," She breathes. "Say something."

She just stares at the younger witch for a moment, takes a deep breath and asks, "What's this about a woman? Where is it that you came from?"

"I don't know her name." Bonnie says. "I came from here, from Mystic Falls."

They all stand there for a moment, just starting at Bonnie until she begins to feel very small. Damon's jaws were clenching every few seconds and he seemed to be breathing deeper. Bonnie could feel the anger rolling off of him in thick waves.

"So let me get this right." Damon starts, eyes pointed at the floor. "You're here and you have no clue what our lives are like or what we're like." Bonnie nods. "So, where's our Bonnie then, the one who does know? Or how do we get her back?"

"I don't…" Bonnie stops and looks at all of their hopeful eyes, as if they're trapped between not believing her at all and this dreadful fear that their Bonnie is actually gone. "I don't think you do."

Damon couldn't seem to find a response or reaction, just stared at her with a grief and bewilderment so deep, she thought she may just drown in it. He seemed to be so exposed, his emotions lacking perplexity or pretense. He was there for a moment, his eyes locked with Bonnie's, trying hard to pour something into her with just a look, but then in an instant, he was gone.

Caroline and Stefan shared a look of fright, both wordlessly communicating through facial expressions and body language. Stefan sighed and held Caroline's petite frame close to his own. Bonnie's brows knit together in confusion.

"Does Elena know about the two of you?" Bonnie asks, slightly curious.

Caroline's head snaps to face her. "Elena as in Elena Gilbert?"

Bonnie nods. "Elena as in our mutual best friend since childhood."

"What does she need to know about Stefan and I considering she's dead?"

Bonnie's breath caught and her eyes widened. Something in her chest seemed to sink straight to the pit of her stomach in just a matter of seconds. How could Elena be dead? It seemed as though, for so long, Elena was her reason for carrying on. She had to help protect her, keep her from every harmful thing that seemed to barricade towards her without warning or notice. Her best friend of her whole life is just gone?

And then she remembers what she thought was a dream. Bonnie sees herself standing at the end of Wickery Bridge again watching Elena's father slide down the road in patterns and directly off the side of the bridge.

"Oh my god," She whispers to herself, hugging her own torso. "It was real? She really went off the bridge."

"She did." Caroline said, she seemed to not be phased by this, almost bored to be speaking of it. "It was a long time ago and it was an accident. We both agreed to move on from it."

And Bonnie immediately looked at Stefan with minor revulsion, because Bonnie knew, somehow, that Caroline had been compelled free of any grief concerning Elena. There was a distant look in Caroline's eyes as she spouted out the words and a monotone droning to her voice. It was a trained response to the subject of Elena.

"I'm going to check on Damon." Stefan said swiftly and hastily left the room, ushering a blinking Caroline out with him.

All that remained there then was the two Bennett witches, Sheila giving Bonnie a warm smile. Bonnie sighed deeply, pulling a hand over her face in exasperation. What was she to do now? Damon clearly didn't take the news well and Bonnie couldn't understand why. Stefan had Caroline under some sort of spell it appeared. She clung to him wherever they went and he'd apparently compelled away any feeling for Elena. And Elena, well she was dead, apparently.

"What am I going to do?" Bonnie whimpered out loud.

Her Grams wrapped her arms around Bonnie's shoulders and gave her a reassuring squeeze. Though it seemed there wasn't really anyone else on her side, there was always Grams.

"You'll come to stay at my house with me. We'll try to talk in better detail about what happened and look into how exactly you managed to get here." Her Grams was smiling at her like she'd always known her to smile; taking care of her in dire need like Bonnie had always known her to do.

"But she told me I couldn't go back. The place where I came from is gone, Grams."

Bonnie's voice was feeble and vulnerable. She trusted her Grams, no matter what life or what dimension. She didn't fear her Grams using her weakness against her. Something in her entire resolve began to fracture and it seemed all the things that Bonnie had held in for so long were pouring out of her at a frightening and unruly rate.

What else could she do but mourn when the life she had always recognized as her own and had fought for her own right to even exist in was, all of a sudden, deceased and departed?

Her Grams held her tight as she witnessed the young witch's dam break right before her eyes, but it wasn't the first time she had found herself consoling the mass chaos of emotion she knew Bonnie could produce in herself. An avalanche of emotion was rushing out of Bonnie, steady and swift; sorrow, rage, love, revulsion, forgiveness, remorse, repent.

All smashed into one, colossal cluster of feeling.

_It was a long time coming_.

* * *

Stefan found Damon in the study where they kept the liquor cabinet, naturally. He had sent Caroline home to her mother and came to tend to his brother afterward to find he was already nursing a little glass of Bourbon. Stefan could smell it thick under his nose, aged and newly opened. His brother was staring off into nothing, taking the occasional sip, dejection slowly taking over his features.

"She's gone, Stefan." He says.

His voice cracks a little and Stefan can't remember the last time he's heard Damon's heart racing like this, can't remember the last time he's seen him this vulnerable. In an instant, he's at Damon's side with his hand on his shoulder. There aren't many things that he knew could comfort Damon, besides presence and understanding.

"It's still her." He tries. "She may be exactly the same."

"No, Stefan." Damon replied quietly. "You saw the way she looked at me, the way she talked about me. Whatever little la la land her magic's got her in, she hates me. I can feel it when she looks at me."

Stefan sighed. "I'm holding onto this small hope that one of my best friends is still herself and might snap out of whatever this is soon. You should, too. We don't know if this is real or if it's permanent. Don't drink yourself to death. Help her, Damon. You're the most important person in her life next to her Grams. If you think just because she's disoriented now it doesn't hold any weight, you're wrong."

Damon tried to think clearly, but his mind was clouded by thoughts of Bonnie, little memories of the two of them that he held onto and tortured himself with currently. Last night, it was all perfect. She was eating out of the palm of his hands and he was eating out of the palm of hers. He had just thought to himself that it seemed like they had everything together.

In a matter of hours, it was taken from underneath him while he slept.

And now, he was standing here trapped in a quiet trance, a glass of his finest Bourbon in hand and the girl he loved who now hated him falling apart upstairs in the bedroom they'd shared mostly together for the past year.

It tore him up inside to hear her breaking down, but he felt that it was no longer his place to be by her side. She didn't want him there and they didn't know one another anymore, if what she spouted off was true. The tricky thing about supernatural creatures and magic existing is that it made the odds of _anything_ happening entirely possible.

With him knowing the witch's track record for bizarre, paranormal occurrences that you'd never anticipate, he finds it feasible that Bonnie was still here, but she wasn't the Bonnie he had given his whole self to for the past year and a half. She was a stranger in his home with his lover's face. He just couldn't make sense of where his Bonnie had gone.

How could she just disappear out of thin air like that?

"Sheila's taking her to her house." Damon said at random. "She's having a mental breakdown."

He's listening to the elder witch trying to talk Bonnie into regaining composure long enough just to get her to her home where she was alone and surrounded by something more familiar.

"And you want to help her despite it all?" Stefan asked him softly.

Damon hesitated to answer him, choosing to say instead, "It's her, but it's not her. Her eyes don't recognize me the way my Bonnie's do."

Stefan doesn't reply after that, just sits down in a chair and takes a deep breath. Damon is trapped between going back upstairs, latching himself onto her, rubbing her back, soothing her unrelenting unease and getting in his car, driving until he can't will himself to do it anymore, and feeding on the first living things he comes in contact with.

He wouldn't stop unless the pain stopped first, the mourning and the feeling like he's lost something detrimental to his existence, and if she never came back to him, if she really was gone, he wasn't sure that it would ever stop. Damon felt as though he'd lost her even though she was only in the next room.

_Not the same. Not hers, she's not mine._

Damon just wished it was as easy a concept to grasp as it was to think, because he knew that things had changed now, but he couldn't seem to turn the love he had for her off. He couldn't shake the intense awareness of her he had gained through the time they'd spent together.

He shouldn't be listening to her Grams pull her together. He shouldn't want to be by her side. He should be getting as far as he could so that he could figure out where exactly he was in his head, but he didn't want to get too far from her, despite everything.

Minutes later, Sheila came downstairs guiding a very vacant-looking Bonnie and stopped at the entrance of the study to acknowledge the two brothers. Bonnie wouldn't look at Damon, just looked down at her hands while she played with her fingers. Her eyes were red and swollen from crying, hair matted and in disarray.

Damon wondered, idly, if she even knew how much she loved him. She couldn't with the way she disregarded him now. Damon closed his eyes, letting the visualization of the last time she'd slipped her lean arms around his neck to pull him down to her level for a kiss play out in the back of his mind. When he opened his eyes, he poured himself another drink to chase the thought away.

She looked despondent and judging by the tiny sniffles Damon caught, she wasn't done erupting yet. The very sight of her caused this throbbing ache in his chest that he couldn't give name to, so he swallowed down the fresh glass of Bourbon and looked at Sheila.

"Sheila," He acknowledged quietly.

"Bonnie's going to stay with me until further notice. When she's ready to speak to anyone or ready for visitors, I'll let you all know." She said, though he already knew.

And Damon watches the two of them leave without another word, without trying to stop them, without putting up a fight, without begging Bonnie to look at him and see him the way she did, without erupting right then and there with her like he wanted to.

He just let her go and another glass of Bourbon followed the sound of the door shutting behind the two witches.

* * *

(**A|N**) Hello again! Thank you for all the faves, follows and reviews. This chapter wasn't really "important" in a sense, but the next one will hopefully be a little more lighthearted, at least that's what I'm aiming for. Let me know what you think! - _foxes_

(**Disclaimer**) Don't own it. CW and L. J. Smith do, though.


	6. VI

**Grieving Pattern**

_In my head is a stormy haze.  
I'll be round. I'll be loving you always_

Seven days.

That's how long Bonnie lay in the little twin bed of the spare room her Grams apparently kept for her and stared blankly at the wall. She didn't speak. She barely slept a wink. She quickly found that her dreams were in chaos, previous memories of her old life rushing around her head. She kept seeing Elena's death every time she closed her eyes until it made sense that she was dead.

Until it made sense that she was here.

It took seven days of crying herself to sleep and waking up mere moments later, disturbed by the haunting images of her dreams, for Bonnie to accept that this was her life now. And she was a total stranger to it. Bonnie was starting to feel like she woke up to her own life and everything else that she had ever known was just a dream.

Bonnie was trapped between her emotions; feeling so many things at once, keeping track of her own thoughts was beginning to give her a migraine.

She felt devastated, blamed herself for all this madness, but mostly she was relieved. She finally felt free of all the agony from her old life, free from all the consequences that followed protecting Elena, free of all the little wars, free from death at every corner, free from the grief of her Grams being dead. And because of that relief, an avalanche of guilt fell over her and buried her deep in it.

She felt so lost and the only guidance she seemed to have that was meant to be remotely helpful had come from an ancient existence that talked to her in circles and didn't technically exist anymore. She was dropped into this hole and told that it was her new life to re-navigate, but she was never told how.

No one ever mapped it out for her, how being born into magic works, how one day you could wake up and have your entire knowledge of your own existence stripped from you, done over again, and given back to you in this chaos of things you couldn't begin to fathom.

But.

Always true to her nature, though, Bonnie had decided she would still do her best to figure it out. She would grieve, get all the sorrow out of her bones, wring her frame of all her tears and old memories that no longer were, and then she would face the situation at hand, head-on, with the same force that she always had when fighting for Elena.

It wasn't like Bonnie to get filled up with sorrow and utter defeat. She wasn't the type to just give up and let it go, live with her mess and just lie in it. Although she had no particular desire to, Bonnie had grown accustomed to fighting for her right to live and now was no different. She couldn't let herself be weighed down my grief. It wouldn't take her out of this situation or change the fact that her home was gone.

It hurt, but it was real.

And now she had to heal from it and move on.

The first on her mental list of knowledge she should gather about her new life was herself. She needed to know what exactly this Bonnie had been up to for the last eighteen years and was it anything remotely similar to what Bonnie had been tackling. Was she more powerful with this Bonnie's body or weaker? Was she an active witch or did keep magic use to a minimum?

If Elena was dead, why was she still somehow caught up with the Salvatore brothers?

She had so many questions, a mountain of them, and she felt mildly determined to get them all answered just as soon as she felt like coming out of the little hold she'd dug for herself.

She wasn't sure when she would be. Her Grams had been relatively easy to deal with concerning it. She seemed to catch on quickly that Bonnie wanted to be alone. She would bring Bonnie food that Bonnie wouldn't eat and come for the untouched trays at the end of the night before she turned in for bed. She would never talk to Bonnie, never bother her while she sobbed, never pried, just let her drain herself dry of all emotion.

Bonnie appreciated her Grams more than she could ever know.

The witch peeked over at her alarm clock, it reading 9:30 on the dot. She knew that her Grams would be up at any minute to gather her disregarded meals. Her Grams was always very proud of her strict routines. At 9:32, the knob to her bedroom door jiggled. Bonnie listened with her back to the door, but made no move to greet her when it opened.

"Bonnie," Damon's voice, thick and warm, broke through the air, causing Bonnie's eyes to widen at the sound. She hadn't expected it to be him. Or anyone else, for the matter. "It's time to get up."

Immediately agitated by his presence, Bonnie sat up and glared at him. She probably looked disgusting, mucus crusting to her skin from crying so much, hair matted from tossing in bed and never brushing her hair, eyes red and puffy from lack of sleep, but she didn't care. She hated that the first person she was expected to speak to was him.

"What do you want?" Bonnie snapped at him, voice rough and cracked.

Damon's face fell, but it was only for a moment. Had Bonnie not been staring so intently at him, she'd had have missed the utter disappointment that consumed his features just then, but she caught it just before he masked it over with a forced look of annoyance.

"Well, mostly, I just want my Bonnie back; the one who loved me back and didn't seem to stare at me hoping the sun melted my daylight ring off my finger and I'd burst into flames, but right now I'll settle for finding out what exactly happened to her in the first place."

Bonnie just stared at the vampire, slightly confused and extremely frustrated. She knew that in no world, no matter what the circumstances, she'd never love Damon Salvatore. But he stood here, staring back at her with such a hard, serious expression and a tense silence that she knew he was telling her the truth.

She recalls, very effortlessly, waking up next to Damon naked. She recalls the way Caroline had said that she put herself in Damon's bed routinely, the way Damon said she practically lived at the boardinghouse, the way Damon seemed to hang onto her every word, the way the first person she saw when she came from the woman's trance was Damon and his sea blue eyes staring at her with so much alarm.

She should have probably asked him about their life together in the past, asked him how it came to be that way, but she couldn't seem to fight off the thick layer of resentment and revulsion the elder Salvatore seems to bring out in her. So instead Bonnie says to him, "I could never love you back."

The tone of her voice was blank, but clipping. She could almost see her words cutting up his skin. This didn't seem to shake him. His fist clenched, but Bonnie was so remarkably aware of his every move at that moment, she saw it. He seemed to be prepared for this, for the way she was choosing to respond without real rationality.

"You may not, but _my_ Bonnie does. And that's why I'm going to do everything in my power to bring her back and send you back wherever you came from." He says to her and sits at the end of her bed. "Now, tell me, word-for-word, what this woman you mentioned said to you."

"Where I came from doesn't exist anymore. I told you."

Bonnie's expression was still blank. She wasn't fazed in the slightest by his words. She knew that there was no way to reverse this. She was told that there was no going back, that there was nothing to go back to. She mostly just knew that Damon, no matter what world, was all talk and no bite. There was very little he could do to Bonnie that would benefit either of them.

"Then you can go wherever my Bonnie is and I'll take her back instead." Damon retorted, irritation evident in his voice.

Bonnie blinked at him. "You can't. She's dead."

She was only slightly ashamed to admit the sliver of pleasure she got from watching his resolve crack in front of her. That seemed to do it then, because moments later, Bonnie found herself pinned to the wall by his hands, eyes bloodshot and fangs out. But she didn't feel fear, something in her held her back from reacting, something knew that he was harmless to her.

"She's not." He says with certainty.

"Maybe you're right, but I don't know how to bring her back. This is way out of my magic jurisdiction." She says to him, shockingly calm. "Now put me down before I make you."

And he does.

He plants the tiny witch's feet to the floor gently and moves across the room in an instant to put distance between them, but he doesn't leave. Bonnie was a little surprised that he hadn't put up much more of a fight, hadn't pressed harder for information she didn't have like the Damon she knew would have. She had always known Damon to test her boundaries and push her to compulsory removal because of his colossal-sized ego.

Damon stares at her then and his eyes fill up with that same sadness Bonnie had noticed before, but now it seemed more personal.

"You're nothing like her, if you were wondering." Damon says to her softly, timidly. "You're cold and aggressive. The Bonnie I knew was warm, tender, and kind. She was forgiving and nonjudgmental. And she was powerful, more powerful than anyone ever could have known. She was in control, though. You don't seem to be _any_ of those things. Don't worry yourself with loving back what doesn't love you. You might have her body now, but you're the furthest thing from her."

He doesn't move to leave, doesn't do anything but look at her and wait for a reaction. Bonnie sits down in her bed then, holds his gaze until she'd seated herself comfortably.

"I never claimed to be your Bonnie. I'll have you know that I am all of those things. But you don't know anything about the life I've had."

"That doesn't matter now." He argues. "Your old life is gone, you said. You're stuck here. Whatever has happened to you in the past technically doesn't even exist now."

"I remember my life as it was." She tells him sternly and that seems to be that. "I'm still her, you know. Your Bonnie and me, we're the same being. Our bodies, minds, and magic are one in the same. The lives we perceive as reality are just separate outcomes of different paths we could have taken. There are most likely millions of me with all different paths. I just don't understand why I got thrown into one where I still have to put up with you."

* * *

_d_.  
Damon scowls and rolls his eyes, but doesn't respond to her snips at him. He'd realized early-on that whatever resentment she held for him wasn't actually for _him_, but for whatever version of him she'd encountered in her old life. It was all still so much to wrap his mind around. For the first time in ages, Damon had a headache. But he stayed, regardless of it, regardless of her snide remarks and bitter approach.

He wasn't going to leave her side again, not until he had answers, not until it made sense to him that the woman he loved was sitting right in front of him, but was gone forever.

"Whoever I was to you in your old life must have gotten you riled up quite a bit. What was he like?" Damon asks her curiously.

He tries his hardest not to note the way she rolls her eyes and scrunches up her nose at the thought of something she dislikes and he tries even harder not to notice that it's precisely something his Bonnie would do. But the speckle of hope crept into his cracking resolve and made him grin briefly, before he straightened his face, looked at his hands, and waited for her to answer.

"He was sickening. He was a homicidal moron. He was impulsive. He was reckless. He saw human beings as expendable, useless bits of fast food for him. He's the reason that my Grams was dead. He's the reason for everything that has happened to me and everyone I know in the past year and a half. It's all been a domino effect of his constant, incessant idiocy and missing moral compass."

Damon was quiet for a long time after she finished, letting the weight of her words settle into his mind. He listened to everything she had to say about him and there were things he knew could be applied to his past, but nothing of that nature since he stumbled on his Bonnie. He'd done nothing at all to hurt her or anyone she knew.

"Well," He starts. "I'm sorry that he treated you that way and caused you so much trouble, but you need to stop taking it out on me now. That wasn't me and I've never done anything to Bonnie that would get her or anyone she knows hurt. I don't feed on humans and I don't see their lives are expendable. I used to, but because of my Bonnie, I have a very healthy relationship with humans. I may have a slight temper, but my moral compass is very present."

He hadn't meant to come off so sarcastic or irritated with her, but he couldn't stand that he felt like she was using him as a target for all her negative emotions towards the situation. She was projecting and Damon knew that if it was still his Bonnie, he'd have been the same way. He would never let her treat him like this and talk to him the way she was.

The thought of having her there at that moment just leaves a bitter feeling in his chest.

He never thought he took her for granted, but if she could be back here right now with him; he'd make sure he never did.

His mind wanders to the night of her birthday, the night before it all went to hell. The two of them were curled around each other in bed, legs tangled and skin-again-skin. He remembers pressing kisses to her shoulder and hearing the tiniest chuckle out of her for it every time. He would have missed it without his special hearing.

But now he just missed _her_.

It made his hands shake. It made his throat burn for blood.

* * *

_b_.

Bonnie watched him withdraw with his final comment, watched as moment-after-moment his eyes became more and more sullen, as did his expression. She watched him intently as he took a deep breath and rubbed a hand over his face.

"What did you come here for?" Bonnie asks him.

He laughs then and shakes his head. "To see if Bonnie had come back somehow or if there was a way to bring her back. I came for her, but she's already gone. I guess it's time to accept that."

"Well what are you here for now then?" She asked, mildly irritated.

He shrugs. "It depends on what you plan to do from here. You don't have to stay here, you know. But we wouldn't turn our backs on you if you decided to."

Bonnie remained quiet then, because she hadn't planned on leaving. She, like him, had decided to accept this for what it was, accept her new life for what it was. And though the idea of being intimate with a Salvatore brother made her slightly cringe, she didn't want to be alone in this. She didn't want to go through something else alone.

"I want to stay with my Grams and I want to see Caroline."

The elder Salvatore stands to his feet with a nod and says, "Okay."

_Here I am and I'll take my time  
Here I am and I'll wait in line, always_

* * *

(**A|N**) Sorry this took so impossibly long. I've got two jobs now so have just been writing bits and pieces when I had the time to, but I finally managed to finish. Hopefully the next chapter doesn't take nearly as long to write. Thank you for all the various forms of feedback. I love it! You guys are rad - _foxes_

(**Disclaimer**) Don't own it. CW and L. J. Smith do, though.


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